[lulmerchant]

I don't know if the numbers in the comment you're referring to are correct, but let's assume they're close enough and do the math.

If I pay $5 every other day for 10 diapers, then I'm paying ~$75/month for 150 diapers. $0.50/diaper, $2.50/day.

If I take a pay day loan of $30 for a 200 pack of diapers, then I've just brought a 40 day supply of diapers. $0.15/diaper, $0.75/day.

After 16 days I've recouped my original investment of a $30 loan + $10 fee. By the time day 40 rolls around and I run out of diapers, I've saved $60. I can now afford to buy bulk diapers in perpetuity. For every subsequent month, I'll be spending $52.5 less on diapers.

[FuckOffNeemo]

Good luck finding a legal loan shark that only charges $10.

I can only speak from the fees here in Australia but here, for a small loan. You're looking at a minimum fee of 200-300% and that's assuming you pay on time.

This is why legal loan sharks exist, and if this method actually did work as you intended it, why do legal loan sharks still exist? Couldn't you apply your macroeconomics to everything?

Food? Nappies? Water? Bulk buy all of your items on legal loan sharks just once and you're ahead.

1) Get a small loan

2) Buy all the small disposable/consumables you require in bulk and reap the savings

3) Pay off the loan with 200-300% in fees on top, assuming you pay it off in time

4) ...

5) Profit!

[lulmerchant]

At 200% you still come out ahead after your first packet of diapers.

As somebody who grew up in abject poverty, and who lived in poverty for the first portion of their adult life, better planning will absolutely make situations like this instantaneouly better. When I was poor as hell I put a huge amount of effort into buying in bulk and doing various other things to avoid all of the blindingly obvious poverty traps that exist. It took some hardship to get everything established properly, but my whole life was hardship, so big deal...

Most people in the west could get away with living a sustainable (although shitty) lifestyle in poverty. It’s only proper planning and effort that will pull them out of it.

[ggg9990]

This may be accurate math but it’s also the thought process of a non-indigent person sitting at a computer, not the thinking of someone who works all day for $8.25 and hour and is taking care of a newborn and trying to make ends meet.

[briandear]

If you had the intelligence to do that calculation, you would have the intelligence to not be in such a desperate situation in the first place.

[FuckOffNeemo]

That's not intelligence, it's privilege and having sufficient disposable income to invest in cost saving.

Items like chest freezers that cost more electricity to run, but allow me to buy more food and freeze it. At the cost of larger electricity bills.

It's having enough money for fuel so I can drive 80km to Costco.

It's having /time/ so I can just do the baths of all the above because I'm not working 60 hour weeks to feed the family.

[lulmerchant]

That’s grade school arithmetic. We’re not talking about people who aren’t intelligent enough to do arithmetic, we’re talking about people who don’t have the correct mindset and motivation to make small, incremental investments in their future.